241 Tasting Notes

So full disclosure — Adagio lets you mix and match their teas a bit to make your own custom blend, and this is one I “blended” myself. I wanted to make a tropical tea to go with this tropical coral picture I’d just painted. I really didn’t have high hopes for my blending experiment (having never done this before) but it’s actually pretty good!

Dry, the tea smells amazing. Really really fruity. At first sip, the Ceylon base seemed stronger than any of the fruit flavors, but once I added a generous spoonful of sugar crystals, the fruit was a lot more obvious. I could recognize the mango but didn’t distinctly taste the passionfruit or the grapefruit — still, they work well together to make a tropical fruit flavor.

The base tea is decent. I like it much better than, say, Upton’s bases, but it’s not as mellow as Harney & Sons or David’s. I do wish it wasn’t quite so sharp, but it doesn’t ruin the tea.

All in all, pretty happy with my first experiment. Plus the tin is cute!

This is one of those perfectly respectable but also perfectly un-noteworthy teas. I got a small sample of it from H&S — I wanted to get samples of ALL their orange pekoes and have a steep-off but strangely only a few were available in that size? — and though I’m happy to polish it off, I feel no need to order a tin.

Received this delightful sample from Tea Ave. This oolong feels very fresh, very on the green side of the oolong spectrum. Dry, it smells like spinach and chard, and I still get some of that once the leaves are steeped, but then they also become strongly floral. The tea has only a lightly floral taste though, a touch of sweetness against the deeper vegetal notes. There’s a little milky flavor, but mostly the tea just feels so smooth going down. Very nice.

So this one first: as someone who likes jasmine but is more than a little sensitive to florals, I appreciate this light approach to the flavor. I definitely taste it, but it’s a side note to the oolong. The instructions said boiling water for 1 minute; I was a bit leary, but did it anyway, and I DO think boiling water is right for this. It didn’t taste at all scorched or astringent, and I think these leaves need the extra heat to bring out the flavor. As is not uncommon for jasmine tea, the flavor got a bit stronger and more balanced when the tea cooled slightly (something that wide-mouthed cup helped with immensely).

Anyway, so excited about this new company! Their official launch isn’t till March and it looks like their website (teaave.com) is still under wraps, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for them. Thank you, Tea Ave!

Preparation

Last of the sample. This one is definitely going on the wishlist, best herbal tea I’ve had in a while. It’s a bit of a pain to brew, because if I put it in the steeper, I’m still tasting it 3 steeps of tea later, no matter how thoroughly I scrub the thing out. So I have to remember to use the tea ball thing instead. Still, well worth the hassle, so good.

I never logged this? That’s weird, because I’ve managed to drink the whole entire package.

Since I have deep weaknesses for both raspberry tea and coconut tea, I guess it’s no surprise that I found a raspberry coconut tea pretty addictive. Both flavor notes are very present, but I think the raspberry has the edge here, and consequently, this is quite a sweet one. Far sweeter than David’s other coconut black tea, Buttered Rum (which is also delicious). The base is also robust and adds a lot of character to the brew.

Smelled medicinal when I opened the bag, but actually, not bad at all. Granted everything’s a trifle on the weak side, but at least it doesn’t have the acidic mulch taste of most decafs. I do get the vanilla, the nut, and the creme, plus there’s some sarsaparilla in here that really makes it all more interesting.

It’s always a good time to have dragonwell. I think I prefer the longwu dragonwell slightly to this, but they’re very close. This one has just a hint of bitterness, but also some fruit notes in addition to the more customary vegetal flavors.

Eh, this one not so much. If decaf tea just tasted like weaker tea, I could live with that, but somehow it always comes with this weird mulchy flavor — a by-product of the de-caffeination process, I assume — along with a hint of acid. Anyway, this one is no exception; while I do taste the chocolate and hazelnut, the mulch flavor is stronger.

Profile

Bio

Happiness Is:
green tea
black tea
white tea if it’s heavily dosed with peaches
oolong? I’m starting to think oolong is the best of both worlds — I haven’t had many yet, but those I’ve tried have been divine.
fruit!
vanilla things
lots of mint!

Not Really My Style:
spices (except for ginger. ginger rocks)
chai (because, you know, the spices)
rooibos (I don’t get it. Everyone seems psyched for it. Not me).
those smoky teas, like lapsang souchong, though once in a while I’ll need something really strong and then I like them.

Bergamot.
Bergamot lives in a weird little category of its own. Sometimes it’s very good. Sometimes it’s very bad. I don’t know why my feelings toward it are always in flux, though the brand is a factor to some extent. Tea companies seem to have vastly different opinions about how to make earl grey.